


stronger together

by icesandvirtues



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, Meta, anyway fuck the lionetts, beaujester if you squint. like REALLY squint, but know that it was in my heart as i wrote this, episode 92
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-24
Updated: 2020-01-24
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:20:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22391665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icesandvirtues/pseuds/icesandvirtues
Summary: Walking up to the gate feels like walking through a dream.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 44





	stronger together

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this in a feverish rush at 3am after the episode ended

Walking up to the gate feels like walking through a dream.

They’ve changed the archway since the last time she was dragged through it; it’s iron, expensive, shining in spite of the rain, ostentatious and gaudy and curling out the name “LIONETT” in letters big enough to spot a mile away.

She can’t tell if it’s a change for the better or worse.

When they get up close, it’s like there’s this disconnect; like some key part of her brain has switched off and she’s piloting her body from a remote location, watching her own actions through a thick, foggy window. Muscle memory has her slipping a bobby pin from her hair and jimmying the gate open effortlessly, thoughtlessly, like she’d done a million times before, and it feels like her hands should be shaking but they’re so, so steady.

She swallows and leads the Nein ( _they’re with you, always, don’t forget they’re with you_ ) up to the door with its heavy lionhead knocker she’s always hated and gives it a few raps.

It’s not quite a relief when it’s some servant she doesn’t know who answers the door.

This weird sense of unreality washes over Beau like rain as they all stand there, dripping, in the parlor; her mind won’t settle. It’s too incongruous, seeing Fjord nudge with his foot at the ottoman she always used to trip over when she came in late, or Nott scope her house ( _her parents’ house, not hers, not anymore_ ) out for valuables to pocket when nobody’s looking. She makes her way over to the fireplace and stares into it deeply, willing every ounce of self-control she’s gathered over the years to come to her now, for all her training to come into place, but when she closes her eyes, all she sees are the tiny pinpricks of afterlight on the back of her eyelids.

“Beauregard?!”

Her training doesn’t desert her, not yet, though it takes all her monk sensibilities not to puke right then and there. There’s Clara— _oh gods, her mother, that’s her mother_ —staring at her from the balcony, and she feels all of fifteen again, body tensing like she’s about to get scolded.

She does all right—she’s doing all right, she thinks, until she sees the kid.

It’s like looking in a goddamn mirror.

Beau thinks she might be having a heart attack, her chest hurts that much. It’s like she can’t breathe. All of it, her training, her walls, her carefully constructed façade, threatens to crumble at the sight of him, small and shy with curling hair and a soft baby fat face and eyes so blue, so blue, so much brighter than her— _their_ —father’s.

She wants to hate him, this child who has all but replaced her, but the second his little arms wrap around her she breaks.

He doesn’t deserve this, a part of her cries. None of it. She could never hate him, not him, not when he has such a burden on his small shoulders, and he doesn’t even know it yet. She feels her lips tremble and her body go white hot and stabbing cold in a second, and she hugs the kid for what feels like an eternity, until she remembers why she’s here, and forces her arms to let loose.

With one deep breath, she ignores the tears on her cheeks and reins in what little control she has left to face her mother, and that’s when the door opens.

Thoreau. Father. _Dad._ Whatever he is to her now, he turns and sees her and goes deathly pale in the doorway, and Beau feels like a marionette whose strings are about to be cut, like a piece of glass with spiderweb cracks running all through it, like a breath of air could knock her down. But she’s raged and hated and longed for years for this, dreamed of it, thought of it so often she imagined every possible word he might say to her, and yet…and yet, her body, her mind betray her. She feels, for one foolish instant, something akin to hope at his greeting.

Then it becomes quite clear that Thoreau neither intends to kick her out again ( _he can try_ , comes a venomous voice in the back of her mind that sounds suspiciously like Jester) nor to prostrate himself with apologies, and for all the time she spent imagining this reunion, she doesn’t know exactly what she wanted, or expected, but it’s not this. It’s not this half-formed regret, this stilted conversation, this blame-shifting, and sickeningly obvious expectation that she forgive them. And she can’t, suddenly, she just _can’t_ , and when Jester pulls her aside she’s about five seconds from going completely nuclear, but like always, the tiefling gives her strength.

She closes her eyes for a brief second, barely a blink, but in that second she sees the whole of the Lucidian Ocean, and okay. Okay, she can hold it. She can hold it while she looks her father in the eyes and acts the bigger person, becomes the woman he never thought she could be, that somehow, in spite of both of them, she’s matured into. And she says her goodbyes like her heart isn’t in shreds, walks to the door like her legs aren’t jellied and numb, and makes it as far as the horses before she collapses into someone’s waiting arms with a choked sob that she can’t bring herself to be embarrassed about.

There are arms around her, so many arms, and she doesn’t sink to her knees in the red, red mud, and she doesn’t try to hold the storm in, because these are her friends—

This is her _family._

They are the Mighty Nein, and they are a family, and they’ve weathered far worse than a storm together, and they’ve taken all her shit and all the worst bits of her, the ones she lets out and the ones she tries her damned best to keep locked away, they took all that and they took more and _they still love her for it_.

And that’s what makes a family.

**Author's Note:**

> FUCK the lionetts am i right??  
> this is my first work so please be gentle! it's also probably my only work, but i do art sometimes. come find me on tumblr @allofthemliches for more cr content!  
> thanks for reading :)


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